Every time the Dreamland Discord or the Dreamland Facebook group reaches another 25 members, I write another Dreamland RPG blogpost like this one. This particular post was written in celebration of reaching 675 members on the Facebook group. If you’re interested in more long-form Dreamland info, please join the groups, and you’ll also be able to vote on what I post here next!
Though I envision Dreamland as containing much more than the locations described by HP Lovecraft, I also am fond of Lovecraft’s places. I did draw many of them for my Dream-Quest graphic novel, after all! For the Dreamland RPG initial setting book (which will be a separate book available alongside the rulebook) I have had the fun opportunity to revisit many of those places, including reimagining places I drew in that graphic novel. In a few cases I’ve even directly updated, redrawn and recolored artwork I did 25 years ago, like in some of these pictures of that smoky, mercantile city, that wicked unholy coastal city, Dylath-Leen.
For the Dreamland setting book, I also paired up with another wonderful author, (NAME TBA), who provided their own vision of the traditional places. In that sense, the setting book is a collaboration, with my art combined with (NAME TBA)’s text. The name of the author will be revealed in time. Here’s a sample, showing the map and some info about the pearl of the Southern Sea, Dylath-Leen!
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Dylath-Leen of the Towers (city)
Reputation: The great port of the Southern Seas, but very dangerous.
Attitude: unfriendly or indifferent
Architecture: Dylath-Leen is built almost entirely from natural hexagonal columns of black basalt, shaped into thin, angular towers of great height, with broad plazas between them. Only by the basalt piers are buildings shorter: warehouses, inns, sea taverns, etc.
Inhabitants: Dylath-Leen’s human citizens are cosmopolitan and suspicious, and many have lacing (see Customs). There are number of Lengite merchants about, abhumans who conceal their humps and horns under rich brocades. There may be other types of abhumans as well. In the subcity dwell human ratfolk that call themselves the Tretch (unfriendly, FGT 1+1D6 (individual), SPD 1+1D6, PER 1D6, STB 4+1D6).
Food: The citizens of Dylath-Leen never know what they are being fed, and it is considered the height of discourtesy to ask.
Customs: In ancient days the city was ruled by five Dukes, but after the Curse of Dylath-Leen, they were killed, and since then it is governed by the Black Bag, a velvet sack that rests on a carnelian table in the Hall of Governance. If civic or legal decisions have to be made, a human called the Right Hand opens the bag and finds an oval sheet of vellum inside with the Bag’s orders. This seems not to be trickery. A number of Merchant Princes, Industrialists and Founders, perpetually feuding among themselves, appoint the Right Hand and use the Bag’s orders to their own advantage. (See sidebar for a few such individuals.) If anyone but the Right Hand touches the bag, they begin to melt, though there may be time for a Wish to save them.
The residents of Dylath-Leen are inveterate gossips. Locals often know things that have happened too far away for news to have come in any conventional way, about distant wars and disasters, and even the fates of individuals. If a dreamer asks long enough about anything, they will hear news (perhaps exaggerated or untrue)—if they do not attract negative attention first.
Dylath-Leen has developed a unique artform: using enchantment and prayer, artists change the skin of humans and abhumans to a sort of flesh-lace that flutters in layers over a base epidermis. It may be embedded with cabochon rubies to emulate blood. The lace is healthy living flesh; it can be cut or sunburnt but it heals from minor damage, though not from major tears. It can only be created (or mended) in Dylath-Leen, or with a Wish, but Wish-made lacing is never as ornate. Lacing is very expensive, but even poor people save up and have small patches of lacing on their faces or throat.
Exports: the products of the Skai valley, textiles, slaves from Parg and elsewhere.
The Approach to Dylath-Leen
Description: Dylath-Leen sits on the inside curve of a jetty-protected harbor at the mouth of the River Skai. As with so many dreamworld cities, it is a place of towers, but here each stands alone, surrounded by spacious basalt pavements or beautiful “gardens,” actually maze-like arrangements of plants and blooms made of stained glass in black leaded frames, with wide walkways. Regular gates, reminiscent of Métro entrances in Paris, lead into the undercity, where poorer people and small industries collect. The undercity’s chimneys and vents reach open air through tall kiosk-like pillars.
Many residents live in apartments within the towers, but poorer people squat in the uninhabited top stories of the towers, or in crowded, always damp caverns beneath Dylath-Leen.
Landmarks
The Lightning Temple: Electricity is found in a single tower of Dylath-Leen. The Lightning Temple worships The Shadow Behind the Sun, and its sanctuary must be so brilliantly lit that there are no shadows. The Temple’s lightning is bought from Kled, so every two months, a silver-oared galley arrives carrying lightning bottles for the Temple. The bottles also power a beam pointing into the sky; this light can be seen as far away as the Boojum Lands and Parg.
The Undercity is black basalt caverns with some large, high-ceilinged spaces, and many natural chambers and tunnels converted to homes, workshops, shops, and taverns. There are openings to the sea, so it always feels damp. Smuggling is common, though port authorities try to control it. It is quite common for surface dwellers to visit the undercity, where the best seafood and music are found.
The Black Galleys are Dylath-Leen’s shame. These three-banked Lengite galleys trade rubies for slaves, often from Parg, the jungled land across the river. Along with Skai wool and Parg gold, the slaves are loaded into the galleys, never to be seen again. Residents of Dylath-Leen claim not to know what happens to the slaves, but others report that some are fed to the unseen galley oarsmen, and many are taken through the Basalt Pillars of the West and fed to the moon-beasts that dwell on the Moon. Black galleys dock at Sish Pier where there is also a slave market.
The Sea Road travels many many miles along the shores of the Golden Sea, from the Boojum Lands to Parg to other faraway places. In the center of Dylath-Leen is a onyx henge at what might be considered Mile 0, stained with the blood of birds that have been sacrificed to a speedy journey, and of badgers, for safety.
Dylath-Leen at Street Level. Life is very different in the high towers and entry-restricted coffeeshops of the Founders.
If you like this and want more, please check out the Dreamland Facebook Group and Dreamland Discord, and download the free Dreamland Quickstart from Exalted Funeral!
This is a continuation of a discussion on your introduction to Nightmares. I don’t know if this website has a notifications feature, so I thought it would be best to reply here, as I didn’t think you would be looking back on things that old often. This has ended up longer than I wanted it to be, but I hope you’ll at least take a look at it.
Hi again. We had a conversation under your last post where as well as expressing my admiration for the RPG, I tried to make the point that I thought you were mistaken about what the Other Gods were. Looking back on that, the last message was far too long, and I’m guessing you sensibly decided it wasn’t worth spending the time on, so I’ve decided to see if I can get my point across in a better way with a more reasonable amount of words.
To get to the point, I’m of the opinion that you’re wrong in assuming that the Other Gods were intended to be any sort of category, instead Lovecraft seems to have intended for them to be a unique set of deities, so Azathoth and Nyarlathotep are not Other Gods and the Other Gods aren’t a group of unique unnamed deities.
I’m of the view that there are two real possibilities for what Lovecraft might have intended the Other Gods to be. The first, which I believe to be overwhelmingly supported, is that he meant for them to be a unique force, separate from his other deities, and all the same sort of thing, not completely unique gods. The second, which I believe is only really supported by the description when Carter meets with Kuranes, is that they were meant to be a closely aligned group of deities of the outer voids, including Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and a number of unnamed deities, but not other named deities like Yog-Sothoth.
The first piece of evidence is that when the Other Gods are brought up in relation to Azathoth or Nyarlathotep, they are always listed separately. To give some examples, the high-priest not to be described prays to the Other Gods and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, at the beginning of Nyarlathotep’s speech, the Other Gods roll and tumble mindlessly in the black ultimate void where broods the daemon-sultan, and the song of night and the spheres was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born. With the sole exception of the previously brought up description which seems to use Azathoth and Nyarlathotep as examples of Other Gods, but could just be listing various gods out in a weird way, they are always described separately, even where it would be awkward to do so if Azathoth and Nyarlathotep were Other Gods. The counterargument to this would be that this is an example of Lovecraft’s mythic style of references, in the same way that Kadath is always in the cold waste, and Ulthar is always beyond the river Skai, and any awkwardness is either there to sound good, or would be fixed with further editing. No matter your interpretation of that, there is nothing that could be interpreted as things like the Archetypes being Other Gods, so we can safely discard the idea that they were analogous to Call of Cthulhu’s outer gods.
The second piece of evidence, is that they are always described as if they are a single thing, and there are a number of descriptions of their appearance. When the gods of earth are displeased they speak to the Other Gods, when they abandon their duty atop Kadath and Carter intrudes upon that forbidden peak, it is the Other Gods’ upsetting, in that dim first age before the gods or even the Elder Ones were born, the Other Gods danced atop Hatheg-Kla, the Other Gods dragged Barzai the wise screaming into the sky and are implied to have guided the nightmare tempests that caught Carter’s army of ghouls and night-gaunts, and Nyarlathotep claims that the Other Gods know that they cannot return Earth’s gods to Kadath without Carter’s aid, though they would love to bring chaos and horror down upon him for his trespass. As for descriptions of their appearance, the larvae of the Other Gods are black, with slimy paws, and like to leer and grin at that which catches their interest, the Other Gods are gigantic, and things that are probably meant to be the Other Gods are described as shapeless bat-things and vast, leaping shadows. These descriptions of their actions and “thoughts” suggest that if they are some loose grouping, they must be very closely aligned, and the descriptions of their appearance seem to entirely dispel the idea that they are meant to be a collection of unique gods.
The third is the least certain, as it relies on how people view Lovecraft’s gods, which is often greatly influenced by later sources. While an interpretation not fitting with someone’s perception of a deity could be a sign that the interpretation is incorrect, it is often the case that the perception of the deity is instead flawed. With these clarifications said, while terms such as mindless don’t seem to be meant to be taken literally, describing Nyarlathotep as a mindless and gigantic thing, madly dancing, tumbling, flopping, and fluttering, in the formless abysses outside of all universes feels wrong, and it seems unlikely that Azathoth would be aware enough of the specifics of infinity to care if a human went somewhere it wasn’t supposed to, would care about things like maintaining cosmic order or actively ruling its domain, or would frequently go down to dance atop Earth’s peaks with the planet’s small gods. This is unreliable, but it is still perhaps relevant.
The Other Gods are a deeply compelling part of Lovecraft’s writings, and as the nightmare gods most connected to his tales of dream, the fact that so many things based on his dream stories ignore them is disappointing. With the seeming exception of the fantastic Cyclopean games, everything after Lovecraft’s death connected to his dream stories appears to have replaced them with a modern category, and it would be nice to see something that doesn’t do that. Whether or not you agree with me, thank you for taking the time to see what I had to say, this has ended up longer than I wanted it to be, and I appreciate the effort of getting through it.